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Ethnic Cleansing
If anyone had ever tried to classify such things, I suppose this would have been suburban nightmare number twenty-three. It was Sunday night, moving on into Monday morning. We'd been out to Apocalypse on Saturday night and had kept going thoughout Sunday, finally running out of steam around eight o'clock in the evening. Seven of us had started, but only three of us had made it through the gauntlet of the goth nightclub, the early-morning drinking session and the Sunday market trauma. It was a shame that when we finally collapsed into my king-size bed, Jeri and I were too tired to do anything with Michael; we were good friends, not so close that we felt we had to do anything apart from sleep whenever we ended up in bed together. Anyway. As I said, it was Monday morning when the front door was kicked in and the house was invaded by a squad of heavily-armed men, their faces hidden behind reflective-plastic gas-masks. They'd cut off the power before making their dramatic entrance, and the place was underlit by their very bright torches. We were too stunned to ask what they were doing; they just surrounded the bed, pointing their blunt-nosed rifles at us. Jeri - always a quick thinker in these situations -sat up in the bed and let the black sheets drop from around her shoulders, exposing one pale-nippled breast. I could see the line of some of the rifles waver in response, but they weren't about to be swayed from whatever they'd come to do. Someone up the back shouldered their way through the armed men and held up a plastic bag with a sheet of paper inside. I couldn't see much due to the uncertain nature of the light but I did see the word 'cleansing' in bold type near the top of the page. That was all it took to start that Pop Will Eat Itself song cycling through my mind; as they bundled us out of the house - still undressed - and into the back of their black van, I imagined their thumping, booted feet keeping time with the riff in my head, over and over... Ich bin ein Auslander... There were about a dozen others in the back of the van, in similar stages of undress. Nobody I knew. We were too numb to speak; Jeri and I huddled together for solace while the van lurched around the streets, making two more pickups - five more people - before stopping at a long building in the middle of a concrete compound, surrounded by cyclone-wire fences. There were guard-towers at the corners with spotlights and, behind them, just visible against the sky, the long barrels of automatic weapons. We were herded, shivering, through the double doors at the end of the building, down a long corridor and into a low-ceilinged room with that kind of painted concrete floor you sometimes saw in institutional communal showers. The doors slammed shut behind us and there was an ominous silence. I was the only one who spoke: "I guess Jello Biafra was right all along." Jeri laughed, despite herself. A clanking sound came from overhead - oh, Goddess, this was it - and suddenly sprays of warm water shot out of concealed spigots in the ceiling. Again, we were too shocked to say anything; we stood or kneeled in a bunch at the centre of the room while the hot water beat down on us. It was quite relaxing, after a while; I'd just started massaging Jeri's shoulders when the water shut off and the guards entered with large, white towels. We were forcibly dried off and returned to our homes, but they still haven't been back to fix the front door. |
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